Wild Horses And Wild Cattle

Christopher Columbus brought some cattle with him when he discovered the New World, and some of them escaped and ran wild as early as 1493. They ran wild on the Texas plains and multiplied for about four centuries. They were massive herds by the time that Jim and his team of cowboys discovered them and started trail breaking them to herd them north to Abilene. A team of cowboys who were veterans of the Civil War forms up and decides to go to West Texas to gather some wild horses. They do so but notice the massive herds of wild longhorn cattle roaming the range. After saddle breaking the horses, they decide to go round up a herd of wild cattle, trail break them, and drive them to market up at Abilene.

A vivid first-person study of a notorious equine ritual—from the perspective of the wild horses who are its targets Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and shave their manes and tails. Shaving the Beasts is a firsthand account of how the horses experience this traumatic rite, producing a profound revelation about the durability of sociality in the face of violent domination. John Hartigan Jr. constructs an engrossing, day-by-day narrative chronicling the complex, nuanced social lives of wild horses and the impact of their traumatic ritual shearing every summer. His story generates intimate, individual portraits of these creatures while analyzing the social practices—like grazing and grooming—that are the building blocks of equine society. Shaving the Beasts culminates in a searing portrayal of the inspiring resilience these creatures display as they endure and recover from rapa das bestas. Turning away from “thick” description to “thin,” Hartigan moves toward a more observational form of study, focusing on behaviors over interpretations. This vivid approach provides new and important contributions to the study of animal behavior. Ultimately, he comes away with profound, penetrating insights into multispecies interactions and a strong alternative to humancentric ethnographic practices.

The Horse Lover is H. Alan Day’s personal history of the first government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary, with its surprises and pleasures and its plentiful dangers, frustrations, and heartbreak.

Horses have been part of the American West since the first Spanish explorers brought their European-bred steeds onto the new continent. Soon thereafter, some of these animals, lost or abandoned by their owners or captured by indigenous peoples, became the foundation of the great herds of mustangs (from the Spanish mesteño, stray) that still roam the West. These feral horses are inextricably intertwined with the culture, economy, and mythology of the West. The current situation of the mustangs as vigorous competitors for the scanty resources of the West’s drought-parched rangelands has put them at the center of passionate controversies about their purpose, place, and future on the open range. Photographer/oral historian Paula Morin has interviewed sixty-two people who know these horses best: ranchers, horse breeders and trainers, Native Americans, veterinarians, wild horse advocates, mustangers, range scientists, cowboy poets, western historians, wildlife experts, animal behaviorists, and agents of the federal Bureau of Land Management. The result is the most comprehensive, impartial examination yet of the history and impact of wild mustangs in the Great Basin. Morin elicits from her interviewees a range of expertise, insight, and candid opinion about the nature of horses, ranching, and the western environment. Honest Horses brings us the voices of authentic westerners, people who live intimately with horses and the land, who share their experiences and love of the mustangs, and who understand how precariously all life exists in Great Basin.

"What has happened to the mustang and to the wild or feral horse, whether of Spanish or American ancestry, in the West, is exhaustively and interestingly set forth by Walker D. Wyman. His is, perhaps, the final word on the history of the horse on the western range. . . . This is a book which holds the interest not only of students of western history and of the range, but also of the general reader."--New Mexico Historical Review. "A story gleaned from everything worth while that has been written on the wild horse and the bibliography alone will assure it space on any shelf of Americana. . . . Harold Bryant's illustrations are splendid."--New York Times Book Review. "This is a long-needed book--a valuable contribution to pioneer history. The range horse--the Mustang and the Cayuse--played no small part in the development of the West, but that part has been too often forgotten. . . . The story is well and interestingly told by Mr. Wyman."--Oregon Historical Quarterly. "Wyman examines authoritatively the various theories as to the origins of the wild horses of the plains, which eventually competed with the buffalo, transformed the culture of the Plains Indians, and still later constituted a major economic factor in Western ranching. . . . The work constitutes a valuable addition to Western Americana."--Chicago Sun.

Cowboy and photographer Dayton Hyde presents images of and describes his experiences with mustangs and other wild horses around the country, also covering wild breeds around the world, and discusses preservation.

In thirteen stories full of rope burns and brush scratches, the author of the classic Horse Tradin’ tells of the days when he made a specialty of catching wild cows. Ben K. Green calls himself a “stove-up old cowboy,” and readers of this book will learn soon enough where the broken bones came from. Green tells of his adventures with wild steers, sharing with readers the years he worked in thorny brush and canyon country delivering those animals that were too wily or too wild for the normal roundup. Finding them was hard, even dangerous, work. Few cowboys looked for such chores. Green declares, “I got real good at it, but of course in those days I didn’t know any better.”